NCAA's passing of reform package is a milestone

Jan. 20, 2013
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The majority of changes recommended by a Rules Working Group commissioned by NCAA president Mark Emmert in August 2011 were adopted Saturday by the organization's Board of Directors. Such rapid and sweeping reform is rare in the NCAA's history. / LM Otero, Associated Press

by Dan Wolken, USA TODAY Sports

by Dan Wolken, USA TODAY Sports

GRAPEVINE, Texas â?? As college athletics have morphed into a multi-billion dollar enterprise, the organization that runs them has often been criticized for its obsession with enforcing the most insignificant of rules while major scandals go unnoticed or unpunished.

The overregulation of the NCAA was not an accident, but rather rooted in the notion that managing amateur athletics required rigid rules to create an equal playing field, no matter how big the school, how flexible the budget or how deep the tradition.

But with a significant package of reforms passed by the NCAA Division I Board of Directors on Saturday, that paradigm no longer applies. The NCAA has all but admitted it can't ensure an equal playing field, and even if it could, some of the rules that would be required to do so are so inane and impossible to enforce that the return simply isn't worth the cost. In the end, there aren't any rules that will put Louisiana-Lafayette on the same competitive plane as LSU.

"There are universities that made investments 100 years ago that, by historical accident in some instances, have set as their role, scope and mission, things that give them competitive advantages in their ability to fund and support ahtletics," NCAA president Mark Emmert said Saturday. "Michigan has been Michigan for a long time."

For the average fan, what happened at this NCAA Convention will barely be noticed. But for the NCAA enforcement office and coaching staffs in every major sport, the streamlining of the rule book Emmert spearheaded 18 months ago, got passed Saturday and that will go into effect Aug. 1 will be a welcome relief.

Several of the 25 changes adopted Saturday are small and fairly obvious. Schools, for instance, can now provide "reasonable entertainment in conjunction with competition or practice," which means the old joke that athletes could be provided bagels but not cream cheese â?? yes, that was an actual NCAA rule â?? no longer applies. And a new rule that will allow athletes to receive "$300 more than actual and necessary expenses" as long as they don't come from an agent or booster will save a ton of paperwork and compliance headaches for things that used to be considered secondary (or minor) violations.

But there are also some significant ways in which recruiting has now been deregulated, ways that could favor the bigger schools with bigger budgets.

Coaches can now make an unlimited number of contacts with recruits via text messages or social media. Printed recruiting materials sent through the mail are now completely deregulated in terms of frequency or expense. And schools will now have the ability to hire a recruiting coordinator who isn't a head coach or full-time assistant coach, which is a particularly big deal for football.

All three of those things favor schools with major resources. Alabama, if it wanted, could now hire a staff of people to do nothing all day, every day but send mailers and text messages out to recruits â?? something the many schools with much smaller athletic budgets probably couldn't afford.

A change like that, Emmert said, would have probably been a "drag-out fight" as recently as last year. But with the NCAA coming under heavy attack for its lengthy rulebook and how it approaches the increasingly complicated issues of amateurism, a new philosophy is necessary. There are bigger issues to deal with than how many times coaches text recruits.

"We're not going to overcome those natural competitive advantages people have, but when student-athletes step onto the field they know the other team has same number of players and scholarships," Emmert said. "They may have a fancier stadium, but we have a chance to beat these guys because there's competitive fairness. We heard that again and again from student-athletes. That's what they wanted. They're smart kids. They know who's got the shiny locker room and who doesn't. It's, 'Can I go out there and play against these guys?' I think the students got that faster than the rest of us."

That's a completely different tone coming out of the NCAA, but these are different times. Emmert, for all the criticism he has endured, seems committed to reforming the organization into a more nimble beast that can serve the interests of a diverse group of schools while maintaining (as best it can, given the money involved) the bedrock principles of amateur athletics.

All told, the NCAA took about 25 pages out of its rulebook Saturday, and that's important. But it's only a start. Emmert will spend the next year pushing more and even bigger reforms, some of which may get blowback. (Already, he's had to go back to the drawing board on a stipend for all athletes, and a second version of that proposal is expected in April). Issues like the role of agents and new transfer rules, which are part of Emmert's "Phase II" plan, may be stickier than text messages.

"There was virtual unanimity on everything," Emmert said of Saturday's discussions, where only one proposal â?? dealing with the start of a recruiting calendar â?? was tabled for more discussion in April.

Getting an easy consensus won't happen next time around, but deregulating anything about the NCAA has been a tall task for Emmert's predecessors. So in that respect, Saturday was a major victory, and perhaps a breakthrough as he tries to reshape the NCAA into something that operates with a little more common sense than it did before.

"The reality is that people understand that the rules aren't chiseled in stone, that we can make change, we can make adjustments, that we don't have to be tied up in knots by our own traditions and our own processes," Emmert said. "We can actually make decisions."